This is, to me, the most life penetrating subject when I was still a student in a European monastery and the most favorite subject of my philosophy class in the University when I was still working as a college instructor. I suppose to write a book on this subject but with my current job, I don’t think I have the time and credibility to finish and publish it. So, I am sharing this letter to remind myself of the reality and to all my former students out there who are so busy chasing life’s goal or responsibility. We need to pause sometime and play some words with this very sensitive topic.
The experience that I have of love reveals to me what love really is: Why do some people are afraid to love? Why do people need to love? And why people do fall in love? These are the question that I am going to answer based on personal experience with the light of philosophy or to be more specific, Ethics – a branch of philosophy which deal with happiness. Now to start with the first question, Aristotle, from his famous work Nichomachean ethics, pointed out that almost all of us wants to be loved but we don’t want to love.
All of us has our own ideals of love. For teenagers, their ideals of love are like fairy tales, very romantic. For the musicians, their object of love is the harmony or melody created out of musical notes and transform them into music. This is, obviously, very useful, as per Spencer famous quote, “Life without music is unbearable”. There is also love in epicureans which finality is in the pursuit of sensual pleasure, especially the enjoyment of food and comfort. Let us not forget about friendship which both object and the doer are being tied up together through love out of choice. This is quite different from the others since this is the love that the creator or doer is the one being transformed because of love. Unlike the musicians, as a doer, he transforms musical notes to melody; for epicurean, he consumes the food and it became part of of his body. These two examples have one in common, both doers are the one who transform or destroy the object of love. However, in friendship both doer and the object, since they are both human, are the source of happiness to each other, there is a reciprocation. Unlike the musician and the epicurean that their source of happiness, which for the musician is the melody and the epicurean is the food, these two objects don’t have the capacity to love back in return as they are inanimate entities. They dont have the capacity to love. Out of the four example, it is quite obvious that love of friendship is the best cause both doer and the object have unique characteristics and each one carries the beauty or goodness that attracts each other and both has the ability to be attracted which when it is nourish, it will turn into love or I would dare to say, a perfect love.
Now, not of all of us are called to be an artist, not all of us are epicureans, and above all, not all of us are lucky enough to have a real friendship. However, all of us has our on fantasies about romantic love and most of the time, even if we are given a chance, we always miss it. We miss it cause when it happens, we don’t recognize it as it is not what we expect it to be.
Now, why do we fall in love? Or attractive by someone or something? Why falling in love entails joy and pain? To answer of the first two questions in a very idealistic way but the only way I can fully describe it; love is a gift. We don’t own it or create it. It is given by someone or being higher and greater than us. It means we are not the prime mover or the source but someone else is. We are just a mere channel or a host. So, the answer of the question, why we do fall in love? Someone wants us to see the beauty of the nature and this includes friendship as Emerson put it “friendship is a masterpiece of nature”. Someone want us experience of being loved and to love someone else. Someone want us to be happy which is our finality.
But why it is too painful? And why people who fall in love always end up suffering due to betrayal or no reciprocation? Well, let’s try to go back to our definition of love. Love is a gift and very simple. But it is our desire that made it complicated and somehow made it as curse instead of a gift. Our struggle starts with our desire. When we get attracted to someone or something, we tend to possess the source of our attraction. We want it to be ours. We want to carry the source of our attraction anywhere. Now this is the reason why we always end up being prostrated. Because the person that happens to be our source of joy is totally independent from our desire, she or he may have found a source of joy which often times not us. And this is quite evident. Lucky are those who have found real friendship, at least, they have the touch of the reality of being chosen by someone whom they are being attracted. Both of them are the source of joy to each other. However, even friendship can be a source of struggle and prostration since the moment we start to be very close to our friend, we also start to be more dependent to our friend as if we have no strength without our friend’s presence. Then desire again is born; we want to keep our friend for ourselves. Then we fall in love to our friend. Now this is very critical cause when we are falling in love with someone, we can hardly breath without seeing the person. Our senses will scream to sense the person that we love and this creates pain. This is why falling in love is painful. But love supposed to be the source of joy or pleasure not pain. The answer is that we need to tame our senses and teach ourselves that love is not coming from us but it’s coming through us. It has its own way of making things happened not in our own way.
So, if we can be a master of our senses and let the love works in us, transform us from something to something else, then we will see and realize that love is actually very easy and simple. We don’t have to do anything. Let ourselves be loved and let love works through us and we will see that every tiny little things and people around us can be the source of joy or happiness. So, let’s stop the desire to keep something for ourselves but start giving ourselves to something or someone since this is our connatural calling or in a monastic way of saying it – our vocation.